Monday, August 11, 2008

Tuesday Thingers: Popular Books







(From 17 June 2008): What's the most popular book in your library? Have you read it? What did you think? How many users have it? What's the most popular book you don't have? How does a book's popularity figure into your decisions about what to read?
No surprise really, but the most popular book in my library is one of the Harry Potter books: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (owned by 34,182 LibraryThingers). Of course I've read it! Multiple times in fact, and I'll be reading it many times more.

The most popular book on LibraryThing that I don't own is The Kite Runner (owned by 15,707 LibraryThingers). I'm in two minds about reading this book. Well, no I'm not. I'd definitely like to read it, but despite its huge popularity, I just can't get excited enough about it to go and a buy a copy and read it immediately. The subject matter just doesn't do it for me. Perhaps one day I'll get around to it.

A book's popularity doesn't factor into my decisions too much. If I read a lot of good things about a book, I'll probably be inspired to try it, but seeing on LibraryThing that a large number of people own the book isn't going to make me rush out and buy it.

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